A reflowed layout is commonly used for dynamically displaying the entire contents of an electronic document on a screen of a computer device. In the reflowed layout, an arrangement of the content including text streams and graphical objects (i.e., drawings, photographs, clip arts, tables, etc.) can vary depending on a dimension of the screen and display area, scale configuration, user preference, etc. On the other hand, a fixed layout displays content as they are arranged by an author. In the fixed layout, text streams and graphical objects are displayed at fixed positions on the displayed electronic document. Thus, some parts of the electronic document may be truncated or “clipped” depending on the dimension of the display area. The reflowed layout allows for displaying the entire content without such clipping.
The electronic document typically includes “anchors” for positioning the graphical objects. The position of each graphical object is defined relative to the anchors. Like text characters, the anchors are positioned during rendering of the electronic document. Further, the anchors may be specified before, after, or within the text streams.
Depending on a user operation, such as changing window dimensions, font size of texts, or display orientation (e.g., from portrait to landscape, and vice versa), positions of the anchors may vary. Thus, the positions of the graphical objects may entirely depend on variation of the dimension.
Such a variation may disrupt the original arrangement of the electronic document and negatively affect its visibility and fidelity. To prevent such disruption, a preliminary program or script is generally used to arrange the graphical objects in the reflow layout.